Life with HCM
My passion for the sport of pole vaulting started my freshman year of high school as soon as I walked into the first day of track practice. I saw this big pad on the track and just couldn’t figure out what it was. Before that day I only had a vague idea of what pole vaulting really was or how it even worked. At that moment I decided that it was something I had to try. So after warm-ups were done and we split into groups I headed directly to the pole vault pit to learn how to vault. We learn how to hold the pole and all of the basics of the vault, but the entire time all I can think about is flying up in the air like all the people in the Olympics do. After two practices of just pole holding and learning how to approach the box we finally are going to get to try an actual vault into the pit. When it’s my turn I step up on the runway kind of nervous but ready to do this. So I take my step back and off towards the pit I go. I get close to the pit lower my pole into the box plant the pole and jump off the ground. As soon as I was in the air and felt just a small portion of what it felt like to truly vault I knew this was my sport. I went home and watched video after video of old pole vaulters in the Olympics and studied everything they did.
Anything I could find that would help me learn more about the sport to better my skills and become a great vaulter. When I went to school the morning before the first practice I was planning on just doing track to keep in shape for football and wrestling. I had no idea that I would find what I wanted to for the rest of my life. So I continued through my first year of high school track as a pole vaulter just learning every possible thing I could and falling in love with the sport. As the next year of school comes around and football season comes and passes then wrestling season does the same it comes to track season. The thing is football and wrestling season weren’t the same the whole time all I could think about was pole vaulting. Then when my sophomore year track season comes I go to practice, and something clicked and went from being an 11 foot vaulter in my first year to after just one practice now I’m a 13 foot vaulter. I went straight home to my dad hoping there was a place that would allow me to be able to pole vault all year long. Sure enough my dad found a place and he singed me up for lessons. Once we found that place I decided to quit football and wrestling to have all of my time to be a better pole vaulter. Which is exactly what I did. I was going to practice at the practice facility three times a week and if I wasn’t in school track season I was at a USATF track meet every weekend somewhere in the US. Then if I was in school track season I would have school track everyday and after school track three days a week, then i would have my lesson afterwards at 6pm. I continued with this and having a lot of success throughout high school and non school track. After putting all of the hard work and time into pole vaulting I was wanting to go and vault on the next level as a college pole vaulter. Well at the end of my senior year my dream came true through a Facebook message. The pole vault coach from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln sent me a message saying he wanted me to come to his school and be on his track team. I couldn’t believe it, a division 1 school wanted me to be on their team. It truly was a dream come true. After going to the visit and seeing the school and the amazing campus I told the coach I wanted to take his offer to come there. My dad moved me down there and I started college life being a student athlete, but little did I know that my dream that had just come true was going to be very short lived. Shortly after getting to school and going through all of the physicals and tests for the track team they sent me in to get my heart checked due to me having a heart murmur and racing heart. I just figured it would be a check up they would look and everything would be fine and i would leave and go to practice. Well when i was getting the echocardiogram done on my heart I noticed that the person doing the test on me kept making a weird face and seeming uneasy like something was wrong. When the eco was completed the eco tech immediately got up and went into the hall way bringing back multiple doctors. All of the doctor’s look at the pictures from the eco make surprised faces then walk back into the hall closing the door behind them. After about ten minutes go by I start to get nervous I’ve never had doctors act like this and knew it had to be bad. The doctors enter the room again and begin to tell me the news that would change my life forever. I have Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, which is a disease when the heart muscle is abnormally thick and makes it hard for the heart to pump blood. Now that I have been diagnosed with this heart disease, the act of pole vaulting, my true passion and thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life can literally kill me. After finding out all this news and leaving the hospital I had to go the school athletic doctor to talk to him about it. Which I already knew what he was going to say and it was exactly what he said that he couldn’t clear me to vault for the school anymore due to my heart condition. So with this happening I wasn’t able to go to school there anymore due to out of state tuition costs and had to move back home. Now being back at home I have ended up in the hospital a couple times due to my heart. During the times I have been in the hospital they've had to do extensive amount of tests and putting a computer chip under the skin in my chest to monitor my heart at all times. This has caused me to fall into so much debt that I can’t even begin to pay. Even with working a full time job the school expenses and hospital bills are just overwhelming. All this also makes it impossible for me to go back to school and pursue my educational dream of being a pediatric dentist. It would mean so much to me to just be able to get help in making this dream come true.
